Jones - The Last Savage

Sam Jones

2019 by Sam Jones

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 9781795063555

For James Abrego and Joe Giocomarra, friends, veterans, and two of the finest human beings who ever lived.

This ones for you.

A note to the reader:

When I was about twelve, my range of taste in film spanned all the way from Brendan Fraser in Encino Man to Brendan Fraser in The Mummy. While Ill never regret the staggering number of times Ive viewed those films, it was during the summer of 2002, after I received a box of DVDs from a family friend, when my horizons were finally broadened. For the next forty-eight hours, I found myself engrossed in cinematic works like Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, First Blood, several seasons of Miami Vice, and a countless array of other melodramatic action pieces big on thrills and never short on character. I distinctly recall the feelings I had when I watched John McClane, John Rambo, and Riggs and Murtaugh blasting and wisecracking their way through the plot. I was curious and drawn to how real, vulnerable, kick ass, and hilarious these heroes were, and at how the sad symphonies that were their lives, which dovetailed into happy endings (most of the time), were crafted by brilliant creative minds the likes of Richard Donner, Shane Black, and John McTiernan. Masters of the craft. Pioneers of the genre. I was enthralled and blown through the back of the family couch in wide-eyed amazement at these cinematic gems, and I found myself toting a new obsession for nail-biting thrillers packed with a witty punch.

When I wrote this book, my goal was to encapsulate those feelings I had when I first watched these staples of cinema. I wanted to relive the experience that many of us can still remember when we popped in a VHS on Friday night, sat down with a slice, and grinned with delight as we watched our favorite heroes set fire to the screen. I hope you will find a special place in your heart for my addition to that canon of thrillers, and for the zany, offbeat, flawed, and pedal-to-the-metal punk known as Billy Reese.

So yippee-ki-yay, readers. I hope you have a blast.

S. J.

Special Agent William Billy Reese.

Everyone knew him.

Not everyone liked him.

And he hated it when people called him William.

Heads turned at the FBI headquarters in Washington as Billy strolled across the carpeted and windowless hallway of the fourth floor sporting week-old cuts and bruises on his face from a couple of long nights at the office. Traces of his pia coladascented shampoo trailed behind him and crop-dusted the denizens behind their desk as he whistled Low Rider the entire walk through, as carefree and brazen as a man on a morning stroll through the park. After the last few weeks of the madness masquerading as detective work Billy had endured, a meeting with his superiors seemed like a cakewalk.

Agents, all abiding by a suit-and-tie dress code that had changed little since the bureaus inception, began poking their heads out of their offices and cubicles to lay eyes on the culprit who smelled like a Caribbean vacation, a man who many considered to be the most notoriously unconventional, cocky, and ruggedly good-looking undercover agent in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Billy was sporting his usual go-to gray-and-red cardigan, a blue-and-red Hawaiian shirt, faded jeans, and his well-weathered white Nike Bruins with the signature red Swoosh, a slightly hefty buy that had him sticking to a hot dogbased diet for a week to make up for it on the back end. He had a job, yeah, but he was far and away from affording such a lofty purchase on his budget. Everything was month to month.

But the cabbage he dished out to get the Nikes was worth it.

They were just screaming his name when he saw them in the window six months ago, and Billy had a moderate sense of style geared toward maximum comfort that he was adamant to maintain. His handler, the ever-patient Special Agent in Charge Rebecca Ferris, once stated that his overall look was something close to Magnum P.I. having a lovechild with Sam Malone from Cheers before being raised by David Lee Roth.

And Billy made it work.

There were a lot of stories about him that had been thrown around the bureau in the past five years he had served as an agentmost of em true, some of em bullshit. He wasas his handler also statedthe bureaus sparkplug, a UCA (undercover agent) who was as unconventional as he was effective. He drifted from case to case, department to department, and one city to the next like a wanderer with a badge, a 1911 Colt (not standard issue), and a peculiar sense of style that fit his off-kilter personality. His eyes reflected a heavy history that had built up significantly over his semi-fresh thirty-one years in existence, along with very subtle hints of gray that were slowly working their way into his auburn hair, a souvenir from his fair share of thrills, being that Billy Reese attracted trouble, and trouble had held his attention longer than his saint of an ex-wife ever could.

There were a lot of stories floating around about Billy Reese.

This was just one of them.

Billy cut the whistling and slowed his pace, eyeballing the names on the doors in the fourth-floor hallway before finding the winner with the last door on the left:

Donald Brogan

Executive Assistant Director

Criminal Investigations

He turned the handle and walked inside. Brogans administrative assistant, waiting behind her desk and a pile of papers, looked up and said, Head inside, Agent Reese. Hes waiting for you.

It was telling to Billy that he was seeing the EAD. It meant one of two things was about to happen: a commendation or a reprimanding.

Billy was positive that it was probably the latter.

He thanked Brogans assistant, turned left, and opened another door that led into the office. The shades were closed. Reagans nifty headshot was framed and smiling proudly in a portrait on the wall. The only illumination came from a pair of lamps behind a desk. Standing behind that desk was a tall and gaunt man with cheekbones so narrow they were almost casting shadows along the lower part of his face. He was the epitome of the term lanky, and Billythe good-looking and fit young cat that he wasalways made forty-eight-year-old Donald Brogan feel just a little older any time they crossed paths. This caused a little extra saltiness on Brogans end, and he was a man already prone to being salty on the regular. Reporting directly to the deputy director made him that way.

That and a lot of bad nicknames he was given in junior high that he was still trying to scrub from his memory, Rubber Band Brogan being by far the worst.

He oversaw a Noahs ark-size staff, in terms of numbers, if biblical references are your thing, so it went without saying that the man had a laundry list of problems to deal with on a minute-to-minute basis.

And Billy Reese was currently at the top of the list.

Take a seat, Brogan said, just shy of a grunt, as he slid into the leather chair behind his massive desk in his massive office.

Billy moved to the chair across from Brogans. As he sat down, Brogan took account of the various welts, bruises, and scars on Billys face that he had accumulated over the course of a few weeks on the job, including a recently broken nose with bandage taped over the bridge.